


Watch How I Soar

by taliko



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Serenity - Freeform, Watch How I Soar, firefly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taliko/pseuds/taliko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically, Firefly: The Next Generation. </p><p>We were left hanging after Serenity (2005), and the comics cleared up a lot but left me wondering about our fearless crew even farther into the future. So I've taken some liberties (ok, a lot of liberties) and created this. We'll see how it goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch How I Soar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something familiar to get us started?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not sure what the update schedule on this will look like...this story started as a character-building exercise and has just been growing organically since then.
> 
> Feedback is very welcome!

The Black.

She’d always liked that, _the Black_. "Space" just never seemed to cut it. "Space" was empty and open and blank; _the Black_ was full of life and fire (and more than a little death), planets and stars and moons that, sure, might be days and weeks at warp away, but were still there. _The Black_ held life and mystery and, despite the Alliance’s best effort, secrets with answers for those who would seek them.

And it was calm. The Black was silent – that was Kamira’s favorite thing about it. Spending her late childhood and early teenage years on deafening and crowded Sihnon while getting an education under an assumed identity had made her crave stillness. She used to find it in back alleys and the catacomb system snaking its way under the surface; maintenance tunnels and sewers and secret rooms chipped out of stone. Maybe she got it from her mother.

“What’s your contemplation, Captain?”

Kamira glanced down to the pilot, looking up at her from the controls. At forty years old, Mattie Cobb was a small woman. Chronic damplung in childhood and living on a polluted mining planet had stunted her, leaving her with limbs just a little too long, a spine just a little too bent, and a vicious case of asthma. Not exactly imposing, nothing like her brother. The eyes were the same, though. Dark blue, almost black, lit up with a surprising intensity, but Mattie had traded Jayne's ferocity for intelligence and a pilot's hand.

Kamira smiled at the stars, leaning on the back of the pilot’s seat, one hand settled on her belt.

“Not much, Miss Mattie, not much. Just admiring the view, is all.”

Mattie turned back to the windscreen, watching the edge of Sihnon’s atmosphere approach. She’d done this hundreds of times, but she never quite got over the sight of a planet arcing away into the immeasurable distance. Tiny Salisbury in Kalidasa on the Rim was ancient history now, left behind without a backwards glance, but city planets like Sihnon made her feel smaller than the infinity of space ever could.

Several readouts on the dash began to light up as the nose of the ship entered atmo, marking out increases in temperature and signaling for pressure checks. Same old, same old.

Until something flew off the prow with an angry metallic screech, a large sheet of metal whipping over the cabin faster than a blink. Both passengers ducked instinctively, looking back over their heads as if to see where it went. Kamira was the first to recover.

“What was that?!”

"Did you see that?!"

“Was that the primary buffer panel?”

“It did seem to resemble…”

“Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorram ship for no apparent reason?"

Mattie’s hands flew over the keyboard to her left, routing status update feeds to her screen. She paused a split second before glancing back at Kamira, a pinched look haunting the corners of her eyes.

“...yes?”

Kamira stared at her incredulously. “James and Dan checked the entry couplings. _Distinct_ remembrance of it, I have.”

Under them, the ship began to shake. Mattie strained to keep course, the incoming change in exterior pressure and the shell of the ship overheating in upper atmo threatening to throw her control. The floor began to rock as re-entry winds, formerly buffered by a now-absent panel, pushed against the irregularities in the hull, threatening to exploit any weaknesses.

“Well if they don't get us some extra chill from the engine to offset entry burn-through, this’ll be one interesting landing!”

“How interesting?!”

Mattie considered for a moment before turning back to Kamira, something not quite fear in her blue eyes.

“Uh…’oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die’?”

Kamira pointed a finger in Mattie’s direction, cocked eyebrow daring the pilot to smart off again. She reached for the PA mouthpiece on its hook by the door, pulling it close.

“Everyone, this is your captain speaking-“

The floor pitched and tossed her against the nearby wall as a deafening crash tore through the sound of buffeting winds and heating metal.

“We seem to be experiencing some turbulence on this entry sequence, after which we’ll either safely land or…you know, uh, explode.”

She moved to hang up the PA, missed and dropped the mouthpiece, black plastic square on its curly cord banging against the floor as the ship rolled again. The momentum threw Kamira against the wall, knocking her head and shoulder. She slid to the floor, vision swimming, and crawled through the hatch.

“Get us on the ground, Mattie!”

“Promise, Cap!"

"One piece, Mattie!"

"No guarantees, ma'am!"

Once outside the cockpit, Kamira used the handrails on the short set of stairs that led down to the living quarters corridor to pull herself up.

"We crashing?"

Kamira glanced up as the tall, curly-haired redhead walked calmly up towards her, seemingly unaffected by the pitch and roll of the ship. A pair of pale, raven-haired boys poked their heads around the hatch to the kitchen.

"We're gonna explode?"

"I don't wanna explode!"

Emma calmly turned back to them, all patience and understanding.

"Nobody's exploding, boys. Just...run back to the engines. Keep them as cool as possible, yes? Miss Mattie needs all the help she can get."

Twin heads nodded in unison and the Tam boys disappeared as the door shut behind them. Kamira could just make out their small frames bolting across the living deck through the door's round window.

"Tell me why we brought them again?"

"Because Aunt Kaylee can't keep a secret."

"They might be family, but I'm thinking next time, we get a _singular_ engineer that won't panic at every little bump."

Emma turned back to face her, features stilled to a mask that couldn't hide the rising anger in her eyes.

"'Bump'?"

If looks could kill, Kamira's annoyed expression might have melted a weaker person. Good thing it was Emma, then. Takes more than dirty looks to kill a Washburne, Aunt Zoë always said.

"Well," she turned to shout over her shoulder, " _when Mattie gets this ship down intact!_ "

"Working on it, Captain!" came the response.

"My mood is _quite like_ to improve!" she finished to Emma.

Emma just blinked at her slowly, a small sarcastic smile working its way over her usually-stoic face. Emma looked more and more like Aunt Zoë the older she got - a strange comfort in a time like this. Kamira's parents' relationship was...tumultuous, to put it plain. The problem with two fiery people falling in love was that half their love was expressed by fighting. Kamira often found herself hiding at Aunt Zoë's; her stoic calm, even tinged with sadness as it was, gave Kamira the quiet she wanted so much.

"Mattie's the best, Cap. She'll put us down just fine."

Kamira was less certain. Sihnon was all city - all _Chinese_ -style city. No open space for a crash landing that wouldn't cause widespread destruction and havoc, pointy bits and neon signs and rooftop statues (once pretty, now _highly unnecessary_ ) that could snap off or throw them into a death spiral, other vehicles packed in a near-permanent deadlock creating a dangerous 3D maze. Worse, over the decades and as the population grew, more and more buildings had risen above the entries to the various docks and ports in the city center, making them impossible to get to. As a result, large landing pads hovered in the air over the city at various altitudes to catch ships before lowering them to the docks below - once a lifeline, now a likely death sentence.

Another gust of air buffeted the ship as Mattie guided them into lower atmo, the ship groaning in response as it adjusted to planetary air pressure, bucking in the vertical air currents rising off the city below. A worrying _groan-pop-hiss_ echoed through the hull, resonating from somewhere deep - the cargo hold, maybe.

Just then, a channel opened itself on Mattie's communications console and immediately linked into the ship's intercom system. There was a moment of muffled cursing and a woman's voice (pleading? threatening?) before Captain Malcolm Reynolds addressed his ship.

"Kamira Lorraine Serra-Reynolds, I'm certain you have a truly _breathaking_ justification as to why you have commandeered my gorram ship without my express personal sanction."

A second voice followed close after the first; a woman this time.

"Don't even think you're in the clear, Emma Hoban Washburne."

Kamira and Emma made panicked eye contact right as Mattie whipped around in her seat, fighting to maintain control of the ship as her eyes locked onto the incoming frequency. She shot a worried glance over her shoulder to the younger girls, stunned into silence. Mal took their silence as an opportunity to continue.

"As for you, Miss Mattie, I'd have thought a bit of age-seasoned reasoning might have led you to disavow this very prohibited joyride."

Mattie's eyes flicked between the comm screen and the controls under her hands, unsure how to respond. _What would Jayne do?_

_Lie, obviously._

"Uh...wasn't aware this little jaunt of ours wasn't approved, sir."

"Because I believe that for half a heartbeat."

"I just fly her, sir. When Miss River's away, that is."

There was short, exasperated sigh on the other end of the channel.

"Mattie Cobb, you know gorram well as I do that River Tam is on that ship as like as not."

Emma and Kamira whipped around and ran up the steps to the cockpit, struggling against each other through the doorway and yelling over each other in their haste.

"River is _here?_ Why -"

"Mattie, what the _hell?_ What does he -"

The ship lurched again, resisting Mattie's attempts to pull back up and away from the rising rooftops. A police alert beacon registered on another screen, ordering her to decrease speed and begin landing procedures. _If only it were that easy_ , she thought wryly.

A flash of red in the windscreen as a veritable flock of fire rescue drones approached the ship, most of them zipping overhead to spray coolant on overheating sections. Three approached in formation with an emergency buffer lock slung between them, a maintenance bot perched on top. In record time, the temporary panel was welded into the space left by the other; Mattie marveled at the little droid's speed and efficiency as the ship slowly ceased its pitching and the temperature readouts began to quickly stabilize.

"Gorrammit!"

"Yeah Cap, that'll help," Emma added dryly.

"Captain! Emma!" Mattie's consoles had quieted their alarms with the intervention of the new buffer panel, but it looked like her steering had locked up instead. A proximity warning dominated every console in the cockpit as a large shadow darkened the windscreen. Above their ancient Firefly, a Sihnon Planetary Police Force corral ship opened its hatches and extended capture cables, wrapping around key points of the smaller ship and plugging into exterior sockets. The ship sped to match their velocity, then slowly started to retract the cables, pulling the Serenity up towards the hull. A new voice - stern, imperious - took over the intercom.

"Nandi Harbatkin and Vera Alleyne, this Firefly-class freight ship is not registered to you and will therefore be taken to the nearest impound location, where it will stay until its proper owner can be located. You and your crew are bound by law for grand theft spacecraft, identity fraud, and public endangerment. Upon landing, you will be read your rights and taken into custody. Please do not attempt to exit the vessel."

Mattie, Kamira, and Emma looked at each other in a panic, but it was the Tam boys who broke the silence first. Bursting through the doorway, winded from the run from the engine room and smelling of smoke, they looked positively terrified of the newest development. Daniel, firstborn and more dominant of the two, spoke first.

"Emma! You said we wouldn't get in trouble!"

Emma shrugged, looking at Kamira for backup.

"I actually said we  _probably_ wouldn't get in trouble..."

"Besides," Kamira interjected, "you two are, like, fourteen. Even if you do get in trouble today, it goes away in a few years!"

James, younger and more prone to emotional outbursts, started to turn pink as he scrunched his nose angrily.

"I'm not going to jail because of you, Kamira!"

Mattie, who'd been observing since their need for a pilot had been removed, stepped into the fray.

"Boys! You're not going to jail!"

"How do you know?!"

"Because the Captain's right." came a new voice, "I'm here."


End file.
